The Odd Human Condition
by LaughableBlackStorm
Summary: It would have been far easier to complete his transformation in peace, but when angered and desperate citizens of Johannesburg rioted against the District 9 gates, Wikus' life was complicated even further than before.
1. Part I

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything associated with the movie District 9, simply this plot, along with any original characters.

**Warnings:** language, violence

**Please read:** _First off, I would like to thank you for taking the time to check out my story!_

_I was writing this chapter while mainly listening to soundtracks (District 9, In Bruges, Requiem For A Dream, How to Train Your Dragon, King Arthur, etc.), so it felt cooler writing it than it probably is._

_I am aware that the alien species might not actually be called __**Poleepkwa**__; they were referenced as such in Blomkamp's short, Alive in Jo'burg, so it is unknown whether that is their real name, or simply what the South Africans call them. For the purpose of this story, they are actually Poleepkwa. It's barely mentioned anyway, so just go with the flow, I guess._

_Concerning__** the anatomy of the aliens**__. I have taken the liberty to invent some information to suit the story, and to sate my curiosity towards the creatures. If anything is not one hundred percent physically possible/necessary, you can either pretend all is well, or politely let me know. :)_

_Enjoy!_

(chapter revised July 2012)

* * *

**The Odd Human Condition  
****By LaughableBlackStorm**

PART I: District 9

* * *

I. _(day four)_

A habit he had picked up was to abruptly stop what he was doing and wonder where they were, out in space. It was an effortless pattern to fall into; Wikus now spent varying amounts of time every day thinking, contemplating their course on the ship, their speed through endless space (or was it velocity?)… How gravity felt on their planet, how hard the ground was beneath their feet… What it must feel like, travelling such a vast distance away from the area of space that humans had been able to map out... He knew the Prawns came from a galaxy Wikus' own species hardly understood, and to many humans that was threatening.

If he were better with figures and vectors and astrophysical knowledge (someone like Christopher), someone more mathematically and scientifically inclined, Wikus would have calculated the numbers to try to answer his thoughts. Gravity had pulled the massive ship towards the centre of the Earth, and yet, somehow, the Prawns had found a way to defeat it, perhaps through the adaptation to their own greater gravity on their larger home planet.

He wondered how fast the ship moved, if it perhaps rotated as it went along, and if it did how fast it would turn—but he could never begin an attempt to actually figure out the proper equations to give him some clues. Only beings such as Christopher Johnson could work that sort of magic, and Wikus believed his own hat of tricks had been flipped inside out to reveal an empty stage, the rabbit long since hopped away, the moment the black fluid had entered his nose and mouth. His last magical moment had been his promotion. What a lifetime ago.

Sometimes, he wondered if it was possible that Christopher and little Christopher Junior were travelling to an entire alternate universe. Tania had always loved the idea of other dimensions and universes, and Wikus had loved to hear her talk about it so passionately.

It would be so lonely, in such a large vessel with only one other being to speak with. Wikus doubted Christopher minded it, though. He had seemed to have isolated himself and his son from the rest of the district. It had probably been for the better; they had remained under MNU's sensitive radar, only coming into trouble when Wikus himself was sent to evict them.

The back of his neck, at the base of his skull, gave a profound throb as blood rushed to his head. He winced as white specs littered his vision and then gingerly sat down on his small, makeshift bed. With his arms spread out for balance, he went down on his left knee first, then his right, and finally pressed his elbows into the pile of random assortments he called a mattress. He laid his forehead on his right arm, which was almost completely alien now. It was one of the few parts of his body that was not yet fully transformed.

He had been suffering from migraines and these odd rushes of blood for several hours, now, though nothing seemed to be coming of it. He knew his head would begin to transform shortly. His right eye was already an orange-tinted hazel to match his left, the iris larger than any human's, and small scabs of exoskeleton had begun peeking through his scalp onto his forehead and cheeks. The thought of his skull and face transforming terrified him the most. He was nervous that he would lose his memory, but hoped that since his human brain was controlling his alien limbs that perhaps the two brains would become one somehow…

His nose was slowly moulding with his upper jaw and would soon produce the strange tendrils, with the two on either side jointed at the middle. The tendrils closest to his mandible would be clawed at the end, for biting and chewing raw meat. He would begin to _really_ enjoy uncooked cow meat and cat food.

The damned cat food made him feel like a tweaking teenager. Just the thought of consuming the slimy canned food made him simultaneously gag in repulsion and twitch with excitement.

He had closed his eyes to calm the dizzying white spots in his vision; now, he opened them again and sat back on his heels, and stared around the room. To his dismay there were some cat food cans—all of them empty—scattered about, though he had rigorously disciplined himself to one can a day, starting that morning. It took more effort than he cared to admit. He believed that with enough mantras in his head (_I do not need it, I am strong, I am not addicted to fokken cat food, especially the tuna flavour_), he could stop eating it altogether one day.

It made him feel better than the other Prawns stationed on planet Earth. They were neither strong willed enough nor terrified enough to check their addictions; every time he had caught sight of one in District 9, crushing a can and gulping down the contents (normally ten to twenty times a day, sometimes the same Prawn multiple times), Wikus had nodded to himself and reminded himself that he was _different_ than the other Prawns. He was not a real Prawn himself, he was more of an imposter than anything. He was still human beneath the growing amounts of exoskeleton plates. Even though his second pair of arms were fully grown and his waist was a widened, meaty backbone, he was human.

He was _not a Prawn_. You are _not a Prawn_. I am _not a Prawn_.

* * *

II. _(day zero)_

After Christopher and Oliver had gone and MNU had gone and Wikus' hopes of returning to his normal life had gone, he lay on the street for approximately seven and a half minutes, breathing harshly and sobbing to himself. He then crawled back to Christopher's shack, only to realize it was not there anymore and had been blown apart when the little ship had emerged from the ground. Sitting in the dirt, staring at the hole and the rubbish rolling and blowing around the site, Wikus scratched his head, swore to himself, then swore at the Prawns who were watching him.

"Fok you, Christopher," he whispered into his good hand, as he rubbed his face. "You and your fokken little brat."

He dragged his heels through the sand until he sat cross-legged. He watched as some small clouds of dust attached to his shoes and pant legs while others wandered off in the slight breeze that was rolling through District 9 that day. He heard clicks sounding behind him. He turned his head to the side, but did not see an alien. Answering it anyway:

"Go away, Prawn."

A resounding click, along with a sound similar to "_pffcht_." God knew what it meant. The aliens were notorious for making random noises that weren't in their vocabulary. They probably enjoyed listening to themselves speak.

Two legs appeared in front of him, one of which had a pale green scarf wrapped around the ankle and calf. Wikus spent a moment staring at the thing and wondering why there was a Prawn standing in front of him. His vision swam in loops of colours.

Dragging his gaze up the creature's body, he stared into its large orange eyes. Its expression was curious, its antennae waved about. He watched those for a while as well, mesmerized.

"What, uh…" He swallowed, his mouth dry. "You're here for…Christopher Johnson's house? His shack, yes?" He pointed ahead of him, to where the shack used to be, and where a mound of uplifted dirt now stood with scraps of tin. And computer parts.

The Prawn said "_pffcht_" again and glanced at the remains of the shack. Tilting its head to the side, the creature made a motion with its left hand that could have been considered circular.

"Er…no."

"_What?_"

"I don't know, Prawn," he ground out. "Why are you here, okay, what do you want?"

It made the same motion with its hand. "_How is it?_" It glanced briefly at Wikus' Prawn arm.

"My—my _arm?_" Lifting the thing to his face, Wikus flopped it up and down a few times to see the remaining two fingers wiggle. "W-Why does that matter, eh Prawn? What does my arm mean to you, you fokken filthy creature!"

With strength beyond his battered body, Wikus stumbled to his feet and backed away from the alarmed alien.

"It isn't anything!" he exclaimed. He pointed at the alien creature with his alien hand. "Nothing to you! Leave—leave me alone, all—all right, Prawn? Will you back away, please, before I…I hurt you, you got it, I will hurt you, if you do not…give me space!"

It occurred to him that he wasn't breathing, at least not normally. The Prawn had raised its arms in a gesture of peace, but the body language was beyond Wikus' understanding at this moment. "Go back! I don't need you, and you aren't getting my fokken arm, you low fok."

"_Sorry_."

"Yeah," he muttered, dizzy, swaying. "Yeah. All right, now, all…right."

The Prawn lowered its arms. "_Sit down?_"

"W-What? No, you fokken—"

He sat down, but only because his legs liquefied underneath him. His lower back went numb. Surprised that he no longer possessed any natural balance, Wikus fell hard on his shoulders, which were covered in protruding plates of exoskeleton and swollen flesh. "Holy…shit," he wheezed. Above him the Prawn scuttled over so that their faces were parallel, albeit seven feet apart.

"_Okay?_"

"Fokken—" He stopped, searching for the proper adjective, and settled with, "jubilant."

"_Joo-ball-unt_."

Wikus closed his eyes and tried to relax his tense back muscles. "Yes, close enough."

"_Up?_"

Exhausted, dizzy and surprisingly comfortable on the dusty ground, Wikus replied quietly, slurring his words, "No, you simpleton Prawn."

"_Fuck you_," and then claws were under his neck and knees and he was being carried away whilst the last of the MNU personnel fled District 9.

* * *

III. _(day zero)_

The Prawn offered him a jug of water that looked as though it were home to many, many species of bacteria, most of which Wikus figured had probably travelled with the Prawns off the diseased ship. By the time the Prawn had carried him to the shack Wikus could no longer form words, his throat was so dry and his head so muddled, so he merely made a noise in response.

The mattress he was lying on was rotting in several places, and he had a flattened cardboard box for a pillow. Several pairs of folded flannel pyjamas knotted together served as his blanket. Even Wikus had to admit that compared to the ground, which at the time had seemed like an adjustable king sized bed, this was a near godsend.

His eyes closed and he fell asleep for a moment. He was awakened by the Prawn clumsily trying to pour the contaminated water down his unconscious throat. Surprised, he shouted and the Prawn shrieked and nearly dropped the jug.

"What are you doing, man!" Wikus exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. "D-Don't touch me, you fokken…you fokken creature! I'm not having… I'm not going to… I said I didn't do it, I didn't do it… I didn't lie to Tania," he whimpered to himself, rocking back and forth, his hands gripping at holes in the mattress. "I would never do it with a Prawn, I'm not that fokken disgusting, I am turning into one but I am not that fokken disgusting…"

Hesitantly, the Prawn reached forward and pushed him backwards, returning him to the mattress. "_Sleep, human_."

Wikus' glazed eyes found the Prawn's wide ones. The alien's face appeared open. Nothing suspicious. Wikus' fears faded to the back of his feverish mind.

"Please?" he murmured, reaching out with his bad arm. The two Prawn fingers wrapped around the alien's wrist. "Tell her I love her, Prawn? Tell my Tania…that…"

A moment passed, and the hand released the Prawn's arm.

"_Sleep, human_."

* * *

IV. _(day three)_

How were the Prawn's throats designed, exactly, concerning their vocal chords? He wondered if, when he had a Prawn mouth and a Prawn head set on a Prawn neck attached to his now-Prawn shoulders, he wondered if he would still be able to speak English. Laughing would be missed, though he had not laughed in days. Tania always made him laugh; she was such a funny angel. He wondered how she was feeling, if she slept any less fitfully than he did.

The third day since Christopher had left, and Wikus was reaching the end of his horrid transformation. He had been suffering from a headache throughout the entire morning and his skin felt prickly, as though little needles were digging under his skin. It was a sign that his head would begin to transform soon, very soon. He was petrified. Even his right arm was still normal, for the most part. Only on his elbow and some of his upper arm were there plates of dark green exoskeleton poking through. All of his fingernails were gone, had disappeared two days before, during the first hours following Christopher's escape. Scabs had formed over the sensitive skin where his nails used to be, however the pain was fading as the sores quickly healed.

He heard movement outside and he stilled, waiting to pick up any sounds. The house door slid open then shut. He exhaled in relief, then leaned against the wall with his Prawn legs bent in front of him. Because of his modified body structure, his trousers no longer fit him properly, so he had found a piece of rope to tie around his waist. With rags left over from his shirt, which had been ripped apart by his widening upper chest and shoulders, he had fashioned a new shirt from a blanket back in District 9. That was back when his skin had simply been covered in armour plates, before his internal structure had started to change as well. The blanket successfully covered his arms, most importantly his alien one. In laymen's terms he was wearing a poncho.

Unashamedly he missed them. They were his allies, his friends, however brief their encounter had been. Most of all he missed Tania. His eyes roamed the plain walls surrounding him, imagining his beautiful wife sitting across from him, smiling at him with her beautiful lips and nose and soft hazel eyes. His eyes trailed the path that she crawled toward him, to sit beside him. She kissed the top of his head and smiled warmly at him.

"Wikus," she said quietly, "I miss you. I love you."

Her hand touched his cheek and his eyes automatically closed as warmth spread through his body. Her hair smelled of honey bell bushes. She went to weave her fingers between his, and his chest tightened in anxiety. How was he going to explain this to her? What would she say when she saw the two clawed fingers, the thick, plated arm, his legs, the alien parts of him—

"W-Wikus?" she asked hesitantly. Moving slightly away from him, she held his hand and wrist in both of her delicate, human hands. "What is this, baby?"

"N-Nothing, Tania," he stuttered. His eyes remained tightly closed. He couldn't let her see his alien eyes. She would get scared, he would scare her away. She had to stay with him, he could not bear her leaving him again. "It's nothing, just an infection, I'm—I'm getting it fixed real—really soon, I promise."

"It looks horrible, darling! It doesn't hurt, does it, Wikus?"

"No, not at all, my angel. I'm going to fix it for you, really soon, if…if you are willing to wait for me?"

"Wikus, I am scared." She was close to tears, she sounded terrified. He went to wrap his arms around her, but his eyes opened before he was able to touch her.

* * *

V. _(day one)_

"What's your name?" Wikus asked the Prawn when he awoke the morning after Christopher left. He had been slightly alarmed to see the alien's body lying just a foot away from his own on the dilapidated mattress, but after seeing that no harm had been done, and realizing that he was on the Prawn's bed, after all, there was not _too_ much reason to panic. He had of course asked what the Prawn was doing, and after hearing '_kchlacticuh_'—which as far as he knew was not a word—the alien had rolled off the mattress and simply told him, "_My bed, so I sleep_."

It had taken him several minutes to digest the fact that overnight, the rest of his molars had popped out of their cavities (one was nestled in his human hand, the rest presumably digesting in his stomach), and all of his fingernails were scattered on the mattress and cardboard pillow. When he had pulled the blanket back, he saw that his left leg now sported a Prawn foot, ankle and calf.

So, "What's your name?" he asked.

Sparing him a brief glance, as though it were perfectly normal to be hiding a human-alien hybrid in its house during a time of volatile MNU raids, the Prawn began rummaging about its makeshift kitchen. "_Human is Matthew Smith_." It found what it was looking for—a pan that was missing its handle—and placed it on a small, grimy table. "_MNU is orig—or-ridge-in-ul_."

"You have problems speaking or something, man? What's the matter with you."

The Prawn nodded. "_Since growth_." He ducked to scavenge through the shelves that lined the walls. Wikus hoped he wasn't searching for food. Nothing promising could come out from behind mouldy fruit peels and scraps of car tires.

"Why?" Wikus asked curiously, his brow furrowed.

"_Axe-ee-dent_." He pointed to a spot on his head. Wikus could make out an old injury on the creature's otherwise smooth outer skeleton.

"Ah." He smirked at the Prawn. "Did your mother drop you on your head?"

The Prawn glared at him and gestured angrily with its arms, shaking its head from side to side. "_Not her! Don't speak!_"

"Wait a minute, you actually had a mother?"

"_What?_"

"You Prawns, you're all both genders, you know, self-fertilizing machines."

"_Crude_," the Prawn remarked almost sadly, turning back to his shelves. "_Pathetic_."

"Your parent considered itself a woman?"

"_I had two parents—for humans, a mother_. _And father, you_ _bastard_." He pulled a can out from somewhere after throwing empty ones on the floor. It appeared to be his last place to look, as he had become more and more agitated throughout the search.

"That is…so unheard of," Wikus marvelled. "I mean, we know that you are capable of having normal sex, but there is usually only one parent with the egg—"

"_You kill us!_" the Prawn clacked loudly, walking into Wikus' space. The man hastily moved back against the wall. "_Some have b-both because.._." He seemed to lose momentum after stuttering. "_Human ways are ours now, some…times_. _Many stay away from young though_. _Only visit eggs_. _Keeps you from_…_raiding_."

"I have never killed a parent!"

"_Babies? Little Ones?_"

Wikus fell silent, and thought of the shack he had ordered to be burned to the ground. He suddenly heard eggs popping directly behind him and jumped, spinning around, only to see a broken window with jagged edges that cut into the air.

"_Human?_"

"Shut up," he said thickly. Turning back around, he pulled his knees to his chest. "I feel sick, all right? I still feel bad from yesterday."

For the first time that day, he thought of Christopher and Oliver, the Little One who had said he and Wikus were the same.

* * *

VI. _(day one)_

While sleeping the night before, his shoulder and side had completely transformed, which meant his upper body was now half human and half spiky Prawn. Wearing a shirt felt uncomfortable and tears formed on it throughout the day as he moved about, but he was not ready to take it off. At midday, when Matthew had gone off to find some food (Wikus wondered if he would return, and if so, in what condition), Wikus sat down on the single chair at the rickety table and decided to really have a chat with himself about his situation.

It was the day after the mothership had left. Christopher was coming back in three years with Wikus' cure. That was a long time to be stuck in District 10 with the other Prawns—for that was his future home, he realized while rubbing his balding head. MNU may have backed off District 9 for a short while, but Wikus had no doubts whatsoever that soon enough, in perhaps a matter of hours, they would be back for the rest of the aliens. And Wikus. He wondered if they knew he was still there. Maybe they assumed that after tearing Koobus apart and eating him, the aliens had turned on him—finished him off so that they didn't have to. He entertained the idea for a moment—perhaps it would have been for the better?—but then he caught sight of an empty cat food can and reached for it. He turned it over in his hands, comparing the texture of it through human fingers and Prawn claws. Then he scooped up some left overs from the bottom, and sucked on his finger. Two minutes later he poked his head around the door and stuck the same finger down his throat to bring the food back up.

Shuddering and angry with himself, he sat leaning against the door, back inside the shack. His left secondary arm, which was growing crookedly because he had snapped it by accident, twitched out of his side. His breath shook at the feeling of having control over another limb.

He had to find a way to contact Tania. She was his priority now even more so than before; he knew that he would be cured. He would fix himself for her so that they could go back to normal—back before he had ever stepped foot in District 9. She was his world and if he had to he would climb over the barbed wire fences to see her again.

He was still turning into a Prawn, however. He imagined her reaction to seeing him half transformed. He imagined her eyes widening, but then her warm embrace as she accepted his illness. She vowed to still love him and wait for his cure with him. She told him that he was still her Wikus, still the man she had vowed to love forever on their wedding day, the happiest day of his life. He had felt so right, that day. She had truly looked like the angel that she was… He smiled and figured that God had allowed her, for that one day, to reveal her true beauty to the world.

Prawns passed outside, clicking to each other, arguing over a slab of meat. Wikus' eyes reopened and he stared blankly at the tin ceiling.

She may have been an angel, but he was still turning into a Prawn.

"No," he reminded himself, "I may look like a Prawn, but I am still me. Wikus van der Merwe."

He wished Christopher would return sooner. Only one day after the alien's departure, and Wikus was already losing his patience. He needed something to do.

Scrambling ungracefully to his feet when Matthew returned an hour later, Wikus followed him to the small kitchen. It was proving difficult to walk with two different legs; his Prawn one was transformed to his mid-thigh. The different movements confused him and Matthew made sure to unnecessarily point out the hilarity of the situation.

"Why don't you guys cook the meat?" Wikus asked Matthew. He'd carried through the front door ten cans of cat food and a skinned cow's head. The alien claimed to have bought twenty-five cans, but the food dealers had ripped him off and several Prawns had cornered him on the way back. Wikus sat down at the table while the Prawn fumbled about, in order to give his balance a rest. When Matthew looked around for a place to sit in order to enjoy his meal, Wikus quickly offered him the chair.

"_Tastes better, like th-this_," Matthew replied, a large chunk hanging out of his mouth. His clawed tendrils chewed it slowly, as the slice was slightly too thick. The alien's eyes were wide with friendliness.

"Oh." He vowed to never eat like that once he had a Prawn mouth. "Look, I… I am sorry, for the way I was acting earlier, to you. It was very rude for me to have said that. You've let me stay in your shack without asking anything in return, and that is very nice of you, and I have not returned it."

The meat shifted in Matthew's mouth and the alien nodded. "_Okay_. _Thank you_."

After a beat of silence, where Wikus fiddled with his fingers (on both hands), he asked, "Why do you help me, anyway? Matthew."

"_You s-saved me_. _From MNU_."

"What? When?"

"_Yester-day. The ones with guns, they were poin-ting them at me. But you killed them._"

"I don't remember that."

Matthew shook his head. "_Doubt you me—men-t to do it._"

"Yeah…" Wikus muttered. "I don't think it was on purpose, Matthew, you see I was running, I was trying to help my friend Christopher get to his son and the ship—"

"_It's okay._" The chunk of meat had finally disappeared, and Matthew's tendrils and antennae were moving about quickly, as though they were excited by his success. "_Thank you still. I repay you_."

"Well, er, you're welcome… and thank you, too, for this."

"_You're welcome too_."

* * *

_Thank you for reading! By the way, I heart reviews and reviewers._


	2. Part I, Cont

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything associated with the movie District 9, simply the writing in this story, along with any original characters.

**Warnings:** strong language, violence

_My thanks to Kyuubigod, ObscureWriter and Nina Modaffari for your encouraging reviews! Hopefully everyone enjoyed this instalment as well._

_I would love to hear what you think about this one. It's very helpful, you know!_

_Sincerely,  
__LBS_

* * *

PART I (cont.)

* * *

VII. _(day one)  
_The riots started during the night. Wikus had snapped awake when a loud female voice pierced the air; in his dream muddled mind, it sounded as though her words played off the jagged broken window glass.

"Matthew?"

"_I heard_."

Sitting up, Wikus scratched his head and hissed in pain when his right side seared in pain. Looking down, he noticed his right secondary arm protruding from his side, not yet fully transformed. Begrudgingly he moved the stub around, then the left one, which was now finished growing and bent at an awkward angle, never completely folding back into its hole. After sighing in defeat, he scratched his head again. It was devoid of any hair.

"Fok off." His fingers roamed around his scalp.

"_Shut up. Outside._"

They stood up for a closer look and Wikus watched with wide eyes as groups of people banged against the gates holding the Prawns in from Johannesburg. Some were holding home made signs but he could not read what any of them said. The people of Johannesburg were screaming, pounding at the metal links. Some carried flashlights which they waved about erratically. Others were yelling at the people who were yelling at the aliens; alien rights activists. Wikus' pupils narrowed when the beams of light hit him directly in the face.

Matthew's hands pushed down on his shoulders and he collapsed beneath the window. "_Get down! They'll see you._"

Sitting on the dirt floor, breathing heavily, wondering if he would get caught tonight, Wikus said, "W-What are they doing here?"

"_I don't know._" The Prawn held a clawed hand up and pressed it against he wall beside the window, leaning in closer.

"Stay back!" Wikus exclaimed in panic. Matthew looked down at him oddly. "You – uh, you'll cut yourself, you idiot. That window is very, very sharp."

Matthew glanced at it. "_It's my window._"

"It's broken!"

"_I know!_"

He was sweating. His body was tingling with sensations – panic, dread, confusion. He remembered the riots that had swarmed the city when the aliens had first arrived, back when he was a child. Later he had learned more about it, when he'd become interested in the Prawns, and had stumbled onto a job for MNU, where he learned even more about the aliens and the humans who despised them. The citizens of Johannesburg had been furious and terrified and had broken through the gates. They had dragged Prawns out of the district and beaten them, killed them; some humans were killed by retaliating Prawns. They had wanted the aliens to leave. They had wanted their city and their Earth Prawn-free. And now they were back, and Wikus was on the wrong side of the fence, the one with very little grass.

"What do they want, Matthew? What are they saying?"

"_I don't know. They're ang- ang_—"

"Angry, yes, I know that they are angry. For Christ sake, Prawn, tell me something good!"

The alien glared at him and replied, "_Keep talking so loud, they will t-take you fir-st. Then I can leave, safe._"

"Fok you!" But he remained silent after that, for an hour, as the people continuously screamed and gathered. Several times Matthew peeked out the window to check what was happening – police were at the scene, including some MNU officials, he reported – but mostly he sat at the kitchen table, waiting. Wikus stayed beneath the window.

"They cannot find me," he said suddenly. "We cannot let them find me, they'll – they'll take me away, Matthew, they will kill me, you don't understand…"

"_What would they d-do with you?_"

"You…need to understand, Matthew, okay? That there are…many, many secrets at MNU. They…don't say a word but they tell you how to think. You turn into a bad, very bad person who…victimizes foreigners, like yourself… I thought it was okay to kill the babies, the eggs. There is a lab underground where they research you Prawns and your bodies. They want to find a way to use your weapons, yeah, and they want me to use them. But they want to kill me now, Matthew. They want my organs so that they can…manufacture things, to make your weapons useful for humans and make money. So, so you see here, we need to – we need to make sure they don't get me, because…because…"

Matthew raised a hand. "_It's okay._"

"I just…" His hands gripped his smooth head; fingers dug into the skin without fingernails to break through. "I need to stay here for a bit, until I finish turning into one of you, okay?"

"_Okay. They won't find y_—" The alien stuttered suddenly, struggling, as though choking on the word, before forcing out, "_you._"

* * *

VIII. _(day two)  
_For the first time, Wikus actually stayed awake and watched himself transform. He sat beneath the broken window the entire night, listening to the muffled yelling of the people of Johannesburg, and the guards' attempts to contain the crowd. Neither he nor Matthew moved. Even as morning crept up onto the city, discarding the cold darkness that blanketed District 9 at night, Wikus stayed silent and watched his right leg mirror his left.

When his toes began to itch he rubbed them against the inside of his shoe, until he felt one of his toenails disconnect. It only stung somewhat, a sign that his foot was truly in the process of letting go of its humanity. It was only a matter of time before he would have full Prawn legs; his body wasn't putting up much of a fight, really. It seemed blissfully compliant under the black fluid's influence... Although his immune system had never been very resilient.

Sighing, a bitter taste in his mouth, Wikus pulled off his shoe and sock. (Seeing as his left leg was nearly fully transformed, there was no need for human footwear.) Over the next hour, he observed the first peeks of armoured skin; his bones morphed into something different, in an odd procedure that was uncomfortable but not terribly painful. His foot shortened and grew hard, cushioned soles. His ankle yielded to the Prawn ankle's structure. He lost muscle mass as the exoskeleton broke through the skin; where the muscle went he did not know, but it was most likely converted into something his new body would need to survive. His head thudded against the wall as he said goodbye to another limb. The transformation stopped around the knee, which would make it nearly impossible to walk. He ran his alien hand down his new alien legs. They weren't warm by any means; he felt like a plastic doll. Or a container of some sort – a hard, protective barrier holding the human Wikus within. How could Tania curl up with him when he looked and felt like such a monster?

"_They will not stop,_" commented Matthew, standing beside Wikus at the window again.

Glancing up, Wikus squinted as sunlight blared off the jagged corners of broken glass. "What are they doing, do they just stand around and scream?"

"_So far, yes and no. A few have been vare-ey angry. Pulled wea-weapons._"

Wikus groaned. "Why the fok are they rioting now? The spaceship is gone, isn't it, that's what they wanted. I heard they were fokken happy about it."

Matthew made a snorting noise, one Wikus had heard Christopher use many times; it was a sound of acknowledgement rather than disbelief, as he had first assumed. "_We are too far away to…read the signs._"

Wikus' stomach contracted in hunger and gurgled in discontent. "Ah…" Christopher would have told him what exactly his body was doing. That his body was using up more energy than he was consuming, that his thin and soft membrane tissue was converting into harder, more complex alien tissue, and in order to do so his body needed energy in order to reshape. But Christopher was millions of miles away now, if not some light years. If Wikus remembered correctly, the Andromeda Galaxy was over two million light years away; if Christopher was going to get there and back in three years' time, he must be travelling fast, even Wikus could figure that out. No matter how fast the ship went, Wikus was horridly alone.

"_You want food?_"

"Do you have anything other than…cat food and raw cow meat?"

"_If not,_" Matthew said slowly, moving towards the side of the shack deemed the kitchen, "_we can look for some-something out there._"

"I'm not leaving the shack, you idiot!" Wikus exclaimed. "No, if you don't have anything, you – you are going out there, or I am going to starve."

The Prawn rolled his eyes and stood at the table, looking about the shack. He reached forward and to Wikus' chagrin, picked up a scrap of tire rubber. He held it out to Wikus.

"I am not fokken eating a fokken tire, man!"

"_Just chew on it._"

Grudgingly, he took it. It looked interesting, enticing – if not appetizing, then something to pass the time with. "How many animals has this run over though, eh?" Inspecting it, he was about to put it in his mouth when he noticed Matthew still staring at him. "Turn around, fok," he snapped. "I will not do this with you looking at me."

The alien obediently turned away to leave Wikus in tire-chewing peace. Slowly, he stuck a corner between his teeth and bit down. Nothing interesting happened, although his stomach did feel slightly upset. He was eating a tire and he didn't quite know why. Pulling it out of his mouth and looking at it, he said, "What's so great about this anyway?"

Without glancing at him, Matthew said, "_Chew it._"

"I did, Prawn."

"_Chew it well._"

Well, the grooves in the tire did look interesting. As soon as the rubber hit his tongue, Wikus felt infinitely happier. Endorphins flooded his body as he chewed the corner of the piece of rubber, and without him knowing it, his Prawn feet began to twitch. He was not aware of how stressed he had felt until the tenseness floated away. He relaxed against the wall, no longer caring that the broken window above him. It didn't really matter that the rioting groups kept growing larger by the hour and the people were acting more violent, more desperate, for whatever it was they wanted. Wikus realized that his situation was not that bad, in reality; he was turning into a Prawn, yes, but in three years, he would become human again. He would have Tania again. Christopher would have his people back and Wikus would return to his old, normal life.

"_You like it?_"

He nodded fervently, chewing. Glancing down at his stubby feet, he clicked them together several times. He felt weightless and sure of himself, positive that everything would turn out just fine.

"_You feel better?_"

Another nod, and he took it out of his mouth to say, "Everything gets worse before it gets better," but even as he spoke the euphoria began to slip away, and so he hurriedly put the rubber back in his mouth.

Surrounding District 9, they could hear the citizens screaming, scraping objects against metal. As he sat under the window, Wikus' chest transformed through the hours of the afternoon. He sat biting his scrap of tire, while outside police began bullying the citizens back, nearly overrun. MNU guards and personnel shouted furiously back at the citizens, telling them that soon enough all the Prawns would be gone, just give them time to move their despicable alien asses two hundred kilometres away, they were going to continue moving them out during the evening. A homeless gentleman threw his shoe into the compound and it hit a young alien in the back.

"_Voetsêk!_" he yelled at it. Many of the citizens jeered. Surprised, the little Prawn ran to its parent, who stood some feet away; gathering its child in its arms, the Prawn hissed at the homeless man and turned to walk away.

"_Bliksem _where you goin'!"

"_Shit,_" Matthew said to himself. Wikus was hardly aware of what was happening.

Setting its child back on the ground, the Prawn walked towards the nearest garbage pile. "_Go home, Little One._" The alien rummaged through the dump as its child scampered away, and finally held up a broken steel knife that had been thrown away, most likely by one of the meat dealers, or the Nigerian gangs. The Prawn stood up and walked towards the gate, hunched, ready to attack.

"_And you,_" it said to the homeless man, who was earning congratulations from nearby rioters, "_go to Hell, human!_"

The knife launched through the air, arcing over the tall gate and into the crowd. It plummeted into the shoulder of a woman standing beside the homeless man. Screams filled the air, this time in panic, and an MNU officer shot at the Prawn but the bullet missed and the alien ran off to find its child.

"_Oh, shit,_" repeated Matthew.

"Yeah?" Wikus mumbled through a full mouth.

"PRAWN!" the officer yelled. "We'll find you, you fok!"

"_It is getting wor-worse._"

But everything would get better again, Wikus wanted to say, but did not want to take the time to put the rubber down.

"_It was a – a wife._"

Wikus' eyes glanced up.

"_A man's wife died._"

Slowly, dread and doubt percolated into his euphoric world.

"_There are humans in District 9._"

* * *

IX. _(day two; second half)  
_Wikus dropped the rubber the instant a flaming torch flew through the broken window. Mathew shrieked at the oncoming fire and jumped back, the ball grazing his arm. It crashed into the dilapidated kitchen table, which caught on fire, which made the chair catch on fire, from which flames reached out to the wooden shelves lining the walls and they caught on fire, too.

"Fok! Fok Matthew we need to get out of here!"

Panicked, the Prawn moved this way and that, confused by the fire eating his shack. The screams were louder, closer. Wikus' head swirled around what was happening in District 9; with the rubber clutched tightly in his Prawn hand he stumbled to his feet, but fell back down again. His right leg was half-human and half-alien; he could not stand balanced. Matthew picked him up by the shoulders and half carried, half dragged him out the front door.

Rioters had broken through the front gate – several lay dead or wounded from bullets – while others had found holes in the fence. As Wikus hopped beside Matthew, not knowing which way was best to escape, he remembered crawling under the fence days earlier, when the world had been searching for him. Men and women ran about the District in a fury, brandishing weapons and torches, lighting shacks on fire and attacking the aliens. The Prawns reacted in matched fury and tore the people apart. They threw humans into the air, pulled off their limbs, screeched at them to leave. More humans entered District 9 and attacked more aliens who killed more humans.

Wikus flinched when gunshots sounded in the compound. Matthew made clicking and whirling noises in fear and confusion, and the path they ran was very crooked.

"Matthew!" Wikus cried. "Pull up here, get behind this shack! My – my leg is changing!"

He had to repeat himself in order for the Prawn to hear and understand him.

Relatively safe behind an abandoned shack, Wikus sat on the ground and held his right leg as the transformation continued. He groaned as spikes protruded from the sides of his knee, and his thigh began to change. Matthew motioned his arms in an odd circle.

"_We must move!_"

"And go where, eh Prawn?" Wikus exclaimed. Bullets shot through the tin beside his head and he yelled and fell onto his side, threw himself away from the shack. "Fok! Fokken Jozi!"

Matthew pulled him up again. "_We must go!_"

"They're all over the damn place, Matthew, we can't just go away!" Even so, the alien dragged Wikus away.

In the space between two shacks, Matthew let go of Wikus, who could now stand relatively on his own.

"Mathew, we need – we need _weapons_."

After thinking for a moment, he said, "_Stay h-here._" He held his hands up in a placating manner. Wikus gripped the wall of the shack and hyperventilated. "_I'll get the gun off of that guy._"

"W-What? What guy?" Wikus craned his neck as Matthew disappeared. "What fokken guy, man! Don't just leave me here!"

When Matthew did not return straight away, and guns cracked off into the dimming evening light, Wikus shuffled to the edge of the wall, towards the street, on shaking Prawn legs. His armoured and wider chest expanded with each terrified breath he drew into his lungs. He vaguely wondered if they were still human lungs.

Peering around the corner, he observed. The remaining Prawns of District 9 ran this way and that, away from or toward the humans who had lost their minds. He crouched down in an attempt to remain hidden. Fires were everywhere, and therefore so was smoke. He coughed deeply. Everything was chaos.

"Matthew!" he yelled. "Matthew get back here you fokken Prawn!" A human arm landed in the street across from him and he shrunk back. "_Fok you, Matthew!_"

* * *

X. _(day two; second half)  
_His waist was disappearing, becoming thinner, his chest was expanding, and his vision had changed. The combined firelight and sunlight were almost one and the same. Leaning back against the abandoned shack, somehow unscathed and unnoticed, Wikus imagined both of his eyes gleaming. Both orange-hazel, both larger than a human's eyes. He could see the colour green more prominently now. The sparse grass and shrubbery in District 9 stood out against the dull, dusty ground.

Behind the shack beside the one he was sitting against, Wikus spied a rope. Crawling toward it, he fingered the length for a bit before running it through the loops in his trousers and tying the ends. A compensation for his diminishing waist.

Diagonal to his position, Wikus spied a group of four humans gathered around a shack. They opened the door and let out cries of disgust, and then jeers. They set the shack on fire with their torches and a scrawny man with a gun fired into it. Wikus listened to the pops of the Prawn children trying to escape their egg sacs. He had to hold a hand to his mouth and bite down on it to muffle his sobs and quell his nausea.

They would find him, he knew. There were too many not to. He looked away from the horrendous sight of the humans laughing at the dying Prawn children. Just days earlier, he had been like them, though not as aware. He simply had not _known_. It was a job, a duty, to set fire to the egg shacks and dispose of the baby Prawns because District 9 was being overrun with the aliens. Was ignorance the greater or lesser of two evils, compared to swagger? But he understood now, after meeting Christopher and his son. Wikus believed that these humans were beyond comprehension, too far gone to appreciate what they were destroying. At least until they too learned their lesson, and his was turning into one of the Prawns.

He gazed upon the burning shack again when he heard growls and hisses. Adult aliens were surrounding the humans, most had guns. Both human and non-human weaponry alike. One attempted to run into the shack but two others held it back. There were no more popping sounds. The Prawns who weren't directly affected by the fire, who weren't kneeling in front of it in despair, advanced on the humans with their guns cocked. Wikus watched. His hands were shaking.

The largest alien had blue markings and shot one of the humans. The Repeater, or as MNU called it, the AMR-B05. In a split second, seven bullets ripped through the man's body and he crashed to the ground. His brothers in arms shrieked and tried to scatter, until aliens appeared at their backs.

"_Why are you here?_" demanded the blue Prawn. It levelled its gun directly with the scrawny man's face.

The man was silent, quivering in mortal fear, unable to understand the language. A woman spoke instead, on the verge of tears. Blue spun his attention (and the Repeater) on to her.

"Give us our city back," she said. "Your mothership is gone, you should be as well! Get out of District 9!"

"_We would be gone if you gave us a way out. We do not want to be here._"

"We can't understand you!" said a man who had an ARC Gun resting on the back of his neck – the weapon Wikus had taken to storm the MNU building. His ancient MNU Official mindset commented on the fact that ARC Guns were extremely rare in District 9 nowadays, and the Prawn holding it was a serious criminal. Or a lucky finder. "We try to learn your language, but you don't try to learn ours?"

"_We don't want to associate with you,_" Blue remarked angrily.

"Fucking aliens!" yelled the man. He had an American accident, or perhaps Canadian. The Prawn behind him dug the ARC Gun harder into his flesh.

"Ray, stop!" said the woman.

"Shoot me, you filthy creature!" he threw over his shoulder.

"_Don't,_" said a neutral coloured Prawn. It moved forward to stand in front of Blue, and lowered its axe.

"_Alex?_" the adolescent ARC Prawn said.

Without answering, Alex dropped his axe and picked the man up by his shirt. Holding him extremely close to the flames of the shack, making the man squirm and whimper, the alien said quietly, "_Two of those eggs were mine._"

"Oh fok," Wikus whispered. He crumpled even further into a ball against the wall, trying his best to be non-existent. Prawn parents were terribly protective of their eggs. MNU made videos and posters and announcements claiming that they weren't – _The only reason they lay their eggs is to continue their species; once born into the world, the Prawn feels no love or connection to the egg_; it was all propaganda. In MNU, every employee who worked out in the field knew not to go anywhere near an egg if the parent was around. If you were to eradicate an egg shack, you made sure any Prawns were far, far away, and you prayed you would make it home for dinner.

The man continued to struggle in the Prawn's much stronger grasp, muttering useless pleas as the flames drew close to his back.

"_You killed my family, human._"

"P-Please just let me d-down—"

Suddenly, Alex threw the man back into the fire. Wikus found himself thinking of little Oliver – imagined him stuck in one of the fires, imagined himself being the arsonist. Wikus found himself crying.

What should he do, what should he do, he was going to be caught!

He disappeared into his head for a while, curled up against the wall of the abandoned shack, half Prawn and half remaining human. He wondered what side he was on – human or non-human. He agreed neither with attacking the Prawns nor with attacking the humans. He didn't want to attack anybody. He wanted Christopher to come back with his cure, and he wanted to crawl back to Tania.

A knife skidded across the dirt and stopped against his foot. Wikus awoke from his dream and picked it up. He felt safer now that he was armed. Looking up, he saw that the humans around the egg shack had been disposed of. The Prawns were leaving, scattering their different ways, to try to find an exit from District 9. The fallen front gates would be the most heavily guarded by the police officers who had not flowed into the compound, and surely, there were bodies of humans and non-humans alike scattered about the entrance.

Getting to his knees, Wikus edged his way to the back of the shack, where there was a door. He could hide in the house; it would be infinitely safer than sitting in plain sight, though he had been miraculously unnoticed so far. His limbs were weak and he was unable to support himself for long, so once the door was pushed open he dragged himself inside. It was pathetic and he felt like a sissy, but strength was beyond him now. He lay on the floor for a minute until he realized his foot was still sticking out the door, and then hastily pulled it in. The door banged shut and he flinched, positive someone had heard and would come to investigate. Nobody came during the three minutes he huddled silently, motionlessly, on the dirt floor.

Pushing himself onto his elbows and knees, Wikus looked around the shack. A partially deflated air mattress was sitting in a corner, with a surprisingly comfortable looking quilt placed over it. The bed looked remarkably comfortable and he yearned to lie down in it and sleep for three years. He could pass out until the riots were over, until Christopher came back for him. He could sleep while Prawn children died and humans died so that there was no chance he would witness it.

His shirt was ripped cleanly off his left shoulder from the spikes sticking out of him, had been from his struggle in the mech suit. It was nothing more than shredded rags hanging off of him. Still desperate to hide his deformities, Wikus used the knife, then his Prawn claws when the knife turned out to be dull, to cut a hole in the quilt. He donned the blanket as a hooded shirt-poncho. To an outsider he looked like a real Prawn, albeit with a tiny head and a good foot and a half shorter.

Something came crashing through the door while Wikus' back was turned to it, and he spun around in terror to see a hulking figure rolling on the ground. It slammed the door shut behind it and stood up. A Prawn.

"Holy shit!" He fell back onto the mattress, making air whistle out of it.

The alien turned to look at him in the dimming light. The fires lit most of the district now that the sun was disappearing.

"_Human?_"

"No! No, I'm not one of the rioters—"

The Prawn advanced on him and knelt in front of him. It shook his head. "_No, my hu-human._"

Wikus relaxed. "Matthew?"

"_Yes?_"

"You're alive, oh fok." His relief turned to anger and he hit the alien in the shoulder. "Where the fok were you, man!" he yelled. "I have been sitting around here like a – bloody sitting duck, Matthew!"

Matthew held up two guns. "_Weapons._"

"Whatever. You scared the fok out of me."

"_Sorry._"

"I meant…when you came barrelling through that door – why didn't you just say my name? I would have recognized you."

"_I do not know your na-me._"

"I… No? Really?"

Matthew shook his head. "_You ne-ver told me._"

"It's, uh, Wikus."

"_Okay_." Matthew nodded.

"Look, maybe we should…use though guns, yeah? And get out of here, before we're killed or this shack here explodes?"

As they were leaving, Matthew made a "_kooo_" noise and grabbed a half-full can of cat food off the shelf. "For fok sake, man," Wikus called from the doorway, and Matthew hurriedly followed him (without relinquishing the cat food).

When they emerged from the shack there was a dark green Prawn near them, sitting in a dump pile. It held a skinned cow head in one hand and an extended measuring tape in the other. It watched them shuffle along the shack walls, its tendrils moving about in curiosity.

"Hello there," said Wikus. "Just…leaving, you see. Just stay right there."

The alien gestured to Wikus' poncho. "_It looks like my wife's._"

Enraged, Wikus grabbed the cat food from Matthew's fingers and threw it as hard as he could at the Prawn – which was much harder than he expected. Apparently he was inheriting the aliens' strength now. It hit the alien in the shoulder, but instead of injuring it, the Prawn was distracted and devoured the contents within seconds. Matthew was staring at him. "Prawns don't have wives," Wikus muttered to himself as they turned away.

Sneaking through the dirty streets, they came across both non-injured and injured humans and non-humans. Many humans they encountered simply watched them walk by with worn faces. Prawns glanced at them and continued attacking and running about, though some hissed at them. Wikus doubted many were trying to escape anymore; their mentality would not allow for it. During the initial shock of the invasion, perhaps some had tried to flee, but now they were in a war. He briefly looked at Matthew behind him, who was watching the events unfold with sad and angry eyes.

"We are going to leave here, Matthew," Wikus stated firmly. For the first time since District 9 had spiralled into chaos, he felt strength return to his limbs. He stood tall with his AK-47 pointed in front of him, and he made the decision to lead himself and Matthew out of there. "Do not shoot anyone unless they are looking like they want to kill us, all right?"

"_They would dee-serve it_."

"We can't be seen, okay," he said, irritated. "They don't deserve to die here."

"_Okay._"

"Right, now let's try to find a hole, or something, to crawl through. Over there the fence looks deserted."

He wove his way through the district by entering and exiting through side and back doors of shacks. Every once in a while there was an alien inside one, but after acknowledging each other Wikus was allowed to go on. Matthew followed closely behind him the entire time. Only once a human saw them and started shouting at them, but one sight of Matthew's alien gun made him turn tail.

They exited a shack through the front door this time (the side door would not budge). Peering around the corner, Wikus saw an alien lying motionless against the wall, right where the door would be. Turning away from the sight, he began walking straight down the street. This area of the compound was quieter. In the distance, yells still echoed. By now the sun had fallen for good and the stars were clouded by the smoke rising from the district. Helicopters droned from above.

They came upon a fallen adult Prawn lying on its back in the middle of the street. A little one was sitting beside its head, pulling on its parent's antennae, its own bent down in sadness and confusion. Matthew made a sighing noise.

Memories slipped through the barrier the rubber had placed over the events that had started the riot. Wikus thought about the Prawn protecting its child.

"Matthew," he said quietly as they walked towards the fallen alien. "What colour was that Prawn from before, the one that killed the woman?"

It took Matthew a moment to answer. His grief made it difficult to form words. "_Yellow,_" he finally forced from his throat.

Wikus nodded. They stood at the yellow Prawn's feet, and Wikus waited to see signs of life but movement eluded his vision. The baby Prawn stared up at them and tugged harder on its parent's antennae.

"_Help?_" it said.

Wikus found himself lost for words, so he knelt down beside the little alien, feeling aimless.

"_Father,_" the child said.

Tears in his eyes and his brain felt like slush. The world spun about him in odd geometric patterns. Clouds of smoke.

"It's okay, Oliver," he mumbled, rescuing his balance by placing a hand on Christopher's breathless chest. "Your father is fine. Come with me now, okay little guy?"

"_But Father,_" it quietly said as Wikus picked him up.

"Your father is only resting right now, he's having a nice sleep here on the ground."

Matthew followed him to the fence, which was just a hundred yards away. Two humans were pacing the area, talking to each other and holding long knives.

"_Wikus_," warned Matthew.

Wikus nodded to him and pressed the little Prawn's face into his shirt. Matthew shot a man in the chest and his friend dropped his knife and ran, but then Matthew shot him down as well. The young Prawn twitched at the bangs and Wikus patted his head.

"_How will we – get out?_" Matthew asked. "_Police are over th-there._"

He had inherited a strange clarity in his vision and mind throughout the last few hours. Though his thoughts were muddled and he felt as though the air was thicker than it really was, as if he was swimming through the atmosphere, Wikus knew how he was going to escape District 9.

Setting the little Prawn on the ground, he knelt in front of the gate. Matthew bent down beside him.

"See here?" he said, gesturing to the bottom of the fence. "There is a small hole here. Humans may have tried to get into the district through here before." His eyes roamed over the gate. "We can shoot holes in the links, and use our claws to open a door."

"_It would at-tract the guards._"

"Wait a minute, here…" He stood up and looked around. "This is where I came in by, before." He walked around, searching for the hole at the bottom of the fence, and he heard quiet footsteps behind him. Turning around he saw the little Prawn following him around, never more than two feet behind him. It barely reached mid-thigh on him. Its tiny clawed hands were huddled together near its chest, and it stared up at him. "Hey, there," he said. The young Prawn's head tilted to the side. "We're just looking for a way out, okay little guy? So that you don't get hurt."

"_Like Father?_"

"Yeah." Wikus turned and walked away. "Like your dad."

He located the tunnel to the outside world and waved them over. Wikus crawled through first, then the little Prawn, and finally Matthew made his way out of District 9. Even as they stood outside the compound, Wikus closed his eyes and breathed deeply. It smelled like freedom.

* * *

XI. _(day two; night)  
_The cautiously moved into the city. Police and MNU were everywhere, but so were mounds of grass and buildings and dumpsters, so they silently manoeuvred around the men with guns. Wikus had to repeatedly motion for the young Prawn to shush; it was curious, having never been outside of District 9 before. Matthew stared around in wonder as well. Most people were inside their houses, the doors and windows locked, eyes glued to the television screen for news on the break in. Streetlight shadows guided them through the city, through alleys, side roads and behind buildings. They never noticed the guards trying to find the escaped Prawns.

They halted and crouched between two dingy housing complexes. Matthew lightly tapped his fist against the wall of the grey building. "_Looks nice. We should st-ay in here._"

Wikus looked behind him at the cracks running down the sides of the building, the chunks missing from the walls, the cracked, barred windows. "Yeah," he muttered, "you _would_ like it here. Coming from your old shack this looks like a royal bloody castle, eh?"

The little alien tugged on his pant leg and when it had Wikus' attention, it pointed at Wikus' transformed feet.

"Don't ask questions," he snapped. The little Prawn jumped away and went to see Matthew.

Rubbing his face against his right shoulder, which as far as he knew was still relatively untouched, Wikus thought about what they were doing. MNU would not know about their escape for a while; when they went to Matthew's house to evict him, and he was gone, they would simply assume he had been killed during the riot. However, three Prawns in the middle of Johannesburg would not be easy to hide. They would be noticed straight away unless they could find a decent hiding spot – somewhere that _wasn't_ between two inhabited buildings.

His hands were trembling; the stress was becoming too much.

"_We must find a place to hide,_" said Matthew. "_Somewhere safe._"

"I am not living my life as a fokken underground fugitive, man!" Wikus exclaimed.

Matthew's antennae twitched backward in surprise at the volume of his voice. The small Prawn hit Wikus' leg and made a shushing sound.

Kicking at the Prawn, making it scatter back, Wikus yelled, "Don't you fokken touch me, you little fokken rat Prawn!"

"_Wikus!_" Matthew hissed.

"You shut up!" Wikus turned away, his alien hands grasping his bald head. "Fok, fok, _fok_—" A light flicked on above them. A woman screamed. "—fok! Fok, run!"

Picking up the small Prawn and grabbing Matthew's arm, Wikus yelled to run again. They took off down the alley while behind them the woman screamed for police. The young alien's claws, both primary and secondary ones, seemed permanently wrapped around the fabric of Wikus' shirt-poncho. Behind them, footsteps followed.

"Hey, Prawns!" bellowed a deep voice. Wikus tripped, losing concentration of placing his alien legs properly with his still-human hips. Matthew grabbed his arm to hold him up.

Spinning around to face the MNU officer, Matthew raised his weapon and fired. The man fell instantly, and the little alien squealed into Wikus' chest. The woman screamed even louder for the police and a man named Kijana.

"_There_," said Matthew.

"There's probably more coming," Wikus said. "We need to get out of here and leave—"

The garbage can beside them exploded in a shower of plastic as bullets ripped through it. Both Wikus and Matthew swore and ducked to the side. Spinning around, Wikus saw a group of MNU officers racing down the alley from both directions. "Oh no," he whispered. They were caught, _he_ was caught!

He shifted and realized that his gun was hidden under his poncho.

"Matthew," he muttered. The guards had slowed to a cautious walk, weapons raised to eye level, and were shouting at them to get on their knees. "We can get out of here. Shoot quickly, we both have automatic weapons."

Matthew seemed uncertain, his head turning backwards and forwards, pointing his gun diagonally to the ground to avoid provocation from the guards.

"Get on your knees, Prawns! Or we will shoot you in the fucking heads!"

Obediently they lowered themselves to the concrete, back to back. Wikus placed the young Prawn in between them. "Don't move," he whispered to it. It sat down and curled in a ball, staring up at him the whole time.

"Lower your weapon, Prawn!" Matthew placed it on the ground, though he did not let go. "Let go of it!"

"Take off the blanket, you freak," ordered an officer from Wikus' side. "Christ knows what you're hiding under there, eh?"

Turning slightly, pretending to be fumbling with the poncho, Wikus murmured to the little Prawn, "Don't worry, little guy, Uncle Wikus will take care of you." Lifting the front of his shirt, he raised the AK-47. "Now, Matthew!"

Sharp bangs echoed off the cracked concrete walls and street, and MNU officers stained the ground, their bodies punched through by bullets. The others who remained standing faced off with Matthew and Wikus, who had both returned to their feet. The little Prawn had scurried off to the side, scared by the flashing lights and sounds of the discharging bullets, and was currently flat against the building wall hiding behind garbage bags.

"Stand down!" yelled Wikus. "Stand back, MNU, or we will – we will shoot you guys!"

"Van der Merwe," one of the two left on his side said. "Holy shit."

"This your new best friend?" another asked bitterly, nodding towards Matthew. "You've crossed some very big fokken lines these past few days, you know that?"

"You don't know what the fok you're talking about!" replied Wikus. He held his gun in front of his face, as though it could shield him from a sudden MNU onslaught. "Just let us go. You let us go, yeah, and nobody has to die anymore."

"Get on the goddamn ground or I will blow you apart," deadpanned the first man. Matthew's gun suddenly fired again and Wikus whirled around to see the last man on the alien's side fall down, just feet away from Matthew himself.

"_Stay away from m-me,_" Matthew grumbled.

A bullet sliced through Matthew's side, ripping a hole in Wikus' shirt-poncho in the process – an officer trying to kill the Prawn without hitting Wikus first. Matthew instantly exclaimed curse words and threats as he tried to step around Wikus, to get at the guards.

"No, no, stop it for fok sake, Matthew!" Pushing the alien aside, Wikus stepped forward with his automatic gun still ready in front of him. "Back up. Do not shoot us, all right, and we will let you live."

"On the ground or we will kill you!"

"You guys need me alive!" A last straw Wikus pulled at. "MNU needs me alive or else nobody wins."

"_Get back!_" Matthew yelled. His hulking, threatening figure intimated the officers, who crouched lower to the pavement and raised their guns.

"Put down your fokken weapons!" Wikus yelled. Police were on their way, sirens were blaring on the streets on Johannesburg. "We will let you live and you let us live and we go!"

The men were hesitating. They glanced at their fallen friends and then back at Matthew and Wikus, who looked haggard and incredibly desperate to get away. Perhaps they hesitated too long. Matthew shot one of them in the knee, and the man fell hard screaming. His remaining comrade backed away, his gun still raised, weighing the odds of his survival. Reaching a dim conclusion, he swore to himself and lowered his weapon, letting it hang at his side. Wikus and Matthew began creeping forward, moving to the other side of the alley to avoid him. The man watched them wearily and shook his head. Ignoring them from that point on, he knelt down beside his injured friend, holding him down when the man tried to lift his gun.

Wikus watched the two of them until he was halfway down the alley, and then he wheeled around and took off running. Matthew was right behind him, checking on the officers every couple of steps. Suddenly the alien stopped and exclaimed clicks in surprise. Wikus stumbled to a halt in front of him.

"What, what is it?"

Without answering Matthew took off back toward the guards. "Matthew! What are you doing!" Squinting in the dim lighting and taking a few steps forward, Wikus saw the young alien standing close to the garbage bags, curiously moving closer to the fallen officers. The two still alive were watching it wearily, but silently. When Matthew hastily picked the tyke up off the ground and started coming back, Wikus turned around again and ran as fast as he could. They would be right behind him the whole way.

* * *

XII. _(day two; night)  
_He turned right at the end of the alley. Used the wooden fence to push off of, as he had built up too much momentum to control such a tight turn on his own. When he was twenty metres away he began feeling alone. He turned his head around just in time to see Matthew emerge from behind the building wall, about to turn to follow Wikus, when two bullets punctured the fence on his right side. It made Matthew panic and divert left. Wikus skidded to a stop, tripping over his alien feet. His throat was too dry to call out to Matthew. The Prawn ran for several yards but then stopped, realizing that he had gone the wrong way.

They stared at each other for a moment, breathing heavily. Footsteps were rumbling down the alley towards them.

Panting, Wikus whispered, "Okay. Okay." Blood pounded in his ears, disrupting his balance and vision. He was terrified. Climbing clumsily to his feet, he leaned against the fence and shuffled his way along, continuing the way he had been going. He caught Matthew's eye one more time, in which the little Prawn tugged on Matthew's antennae and Matthew nodded, then turned to the left and vanished into the dark backstreets. "Okay," Wikus whispered again.

He ran, and he too disappeared.

* * *

-END PART I-


	3. Part II

**Disclaimer:** I do not own anything associated with the movie District 9, simply this plot, along with any original characters.

**Warnings:** strong language, violence, disappointing periods of time between updates

* * *

PART II

* * *

XIII. _(day three; day)  
_Where were they, Christopher and his son? How many light years away from Earth… How did they travel so far, so fast? He thought about the ship, the eerie atmosphere that clouded around it, and wished he could have been there when the humans had sawed their way through, making first contact with the aliens. Perhaps then he would have formed an understanding; he would have come to terms with something rumbling inside his being. Maybe then he would not be here, in this place in his life.

Hiding behind dumpsters, on the third day after the ship had left Earth, alone.

Though scientists had marvelled at it and studied it for nearly thirty years, they still did not understand how the ship had remained hovering above Johannesburg with no one operating it. Wikus had once come upon two physicists discussing something about applied forces, a subject that was above his head. He had made a joke about Star Wars (the Force was strong with the mothership), but now he did wonder how it had stayed there, when everything that humans knew about physics dictated that it should have dropped. Now, sitting with his back against a filthy dumpster, wearing a dirty and ripped shirt-poncho, with two empty cans of cat food beside him, Wikus van der Merwe prayed that he too could defy the forces working against him. He prayed that he had the ship's science within him.

In a hazy, dehydrated dream, he imaged Tania as Luke Skywalker and her raving cunt of a father, Piet, as Darth Vader. Wikus wasn't entirely sure where he was throughout the illusion. Perhaps Luke's lightsaber.

Rifling through the dumpsters when no one was about, he found several more cans of cat food, along with cans of leftover soup, ravioli, pear, tomato sauce, and remnants of uneaten meals. After he stuffed it all into his cramping stomach, he found a brutally ripped apart pillow that had last year's second place soccer team logo printed on it. Kept that, it would come in handy. He found a blank CD, held on to it as well.

Using his claws, he slit a line into the blanket he wore over his head and torso, and dug a pocket out of it. It spanned from one side to the other, making enough room to store his newfound pillow, CD, and cat food cans. He was not entirely sure why he wanted to keep the tin cans, but it might have been because of the remaining scent that radiated from them. He felt pathetic.

Fuck, he was really turning into a Prawn.

Wikus wept silently with his shirt-poncho pulled over his face for several minutes, wallowing deep in self-pity. He wanted desperately to see his wife again, but how could he ever look upon her again? He was a monster, a hideous beast. He didn't belong to this planet anymore, for Christ's sake! He was worthless. They had ruined his golden life, those goddamn, mother fucking, ass licking _Prawns_. All of the world's military forces should have blown the mothership to smithereens as soon as it had broken through the Earth's atmosphere. Fuck humanitarian aid; Wikus was losing his humanity every hour at an increasing rate – why should the rest of the world pretend to have any? Wikus had experienced humanity finely in the MNU biotechnology lab, when he had been drenched in mind-numbingly freezing water, hooked up to electrodes, examined like an intriguing specimen. They had motioned to rip his heart out of his chest without the decency of killing him first. They had him strapped down to a metal table and spoke to each other as though he couldn't understand them, as though he were a newborn Prawn child.

Yes, humanity seemed promising.

Living as a Prawn even less so.

What he would not give to be a chunk of cat food. Or ravioli.

After the tears dried and it became too stifling under the blanket, Wikus emerged from his dug out pit and stared up at the bright blue sky. He envisioned the mothership and Christopher sitting inside it with Christopher Junior, and he remembered that not all aliens were bad. None were _really_ inheritably ill wishing; some were obviously more prone to succumbing to hating the humans, but so were many humans vulnerable to being brain washed into degrading the aliens. Every human worked with what they were given, and some mistook opportunities for signs and justifications. Some Prawns grew up in District 9 and saw weapons in human hands and adjusted accordingly. Some humans were born beside District 9 and witnessed poverty and weapons in Prawn hands and adjusted accordingly. Both saw violence brimming on every new day's horizon, held in the palms of friends and enemies. They adapted to survive. They adapted differently, but as a result of the events around them nonetheless.

There were aliens like Christopher Johnson and there were humans like Tania. Wikus tried to place himself in one of the groups and failed to do so. He had a past of ignorance and prejudice to account for, but also a growing understanding and acceptance. Staring down at his arms, though, he knew that he still had a long struggle ahead of him.

He breathed deeply and stared again up at the sky, which was now clustered with gray clouds.

But for Tania, he would continue trying.

* * *

XIV. _(day three; night)  
_He should move. He told himself to get up and crouch close to the ground and get out from behind the degrading goddamn dumpster. To his own surprise he followed his own initiative.

It was quite clear as soon as he got up off the ground that his legs had transformed some more. His body was so accustomed to the constant straining and stinging of the transformation that he barely noticed when something new took place. He contemplated that for a moment; wondered what was wrong with him (aside from the obvious). Briefly he glared down at a patch of shrubbery and he telepathically asked a twig when his luck had gone so sour. Then he shook his head and walked away from the shrub, muttering about crazy people who speak to sticks. Although it was an interesting shade of murky green.

There were two small pinpricks of pressure on his scalp, right at his hairline. He knew without touching them that two of his antennae were sprouting up. He hoped that they would at least wait for the rest of his alien head, lest he look _supremely_ ridiculous.

Where should he go now? It was dark out again, approaching the dawn of the fourth day without Christopher and Oliver. He wished Matthew and the little tyke were still with him; without them he was utterly alone, a hunted species roaming around the city. An easy target. He understood that wearing a dirty hooded poncho did not offer him the level of subtlety that he desired at the moment; however, not wearing it would make him even more of an eye sore. As he slowly walked down the alley, his pants slipped down and he had to take a moment to tie the rope around his waist tighter. His lower torso was diminishing into small spikes and meaty exoskeleton, and his chest and back were nearing completion as well.

He passed several homeless people, mostly lost, haggard men. Most were asleep and the ones who weren't simply ignored him, although one did make drunken sounds at him as he passed by. Keeping his gaze away from the people, he steadily stared straight ahead and ignored the fact that his Prawn feet were visible. His lower legs were, too – because of the second joint placed in the middle of his shin, his pants no longer fit correctly, and he had had to roll them up.

An adolescent appeared out of the shadows. "_Daga_, _daga_," he kept muttering, following after him. "No, I – I do not have any illegal marijuana for you!" Wikus said and quickly turned down an alley. The kid did not follow him.

He spied a leaking pipe exiting a wall and spent nearly thirty minutes sitting under it, catching the droplets on his tongue. The dry, humid South African weather was taking a terrible toll on his hungry, thirsty body, although it appeared that his new form conserved water more efficiently than his human body had.

It was pure luck, or perhaps pure subconscious instinct, that landed him behind old Ms. Volschenk's house. Feeling as though his surroundings were familiar, Wikus looked to the right and barely stopped himself from crying out with joy. There, with faded pink siding and a structure that leaned slightly to the left, stood the square house of his old teacher. Ms. Volschenk was an absentminded, occasionally bitter woman, but when Wikus had been in her grade two class she'd been a decent teacher. She was awkward when it came to handling distressed children, though. When Wikus had fallen and split open his elbow, she had worried her lip, patted his sobbing head, and told him it would be in his best interest to find somebody else to help him.

What he would not give to go to her front door at that moment, and hug her. It would give her a heart attack, most likely – she was dangerously overweight and in her late eighties, by now – but he was so relieved to see anything emotionally comforting that it wouldn't matter. He had felt safe and secure in the second grade, with Ms. Volschenk around, and that memory trickled into the present in his time of panic.

Finding his old teacher's house was great for one other, much larger, reason, however.

It meant that Tania was just two blocks away.

* * *

XV. _(day nine)  
_His parents drove up to his and Tania's house early in the morning. Though Wikus could not see them, he recognized the car as it pulled up in the driveway, and it tore at his Prawn heartstrings. Movement was visible inside the house, through the open windows; Tania always had them open for fresh air, opting out of air conditioning systems. It had driven Wikus mad for several months before he'd begrudgingly admitted that it wasn't so bad.

"And better for the environment," she would remind him. Again.

"Yes, that too, baby."

Day nine. Wikus had not changed his location for five days now, and while it was terrible being so close to his lovely angel all the time, it also somehow made the struggle worth it. He asked himself several times a day – normally after wondering about Christopher and Oliver – if he could possibly stake it out there for three years. Many times he said no, it would be impossible. He believed he was already going crazy, staying in this small place for less than a week. He lost hope when he realized it would be too hard.

And then she would make an appearance, later in the day, sometimes in the middle of his train of thought. She enjoyed sitting on their back porch, perched in a chair, reading, or sitting at the patio table playing cards. Other times she simply paced the perimeter of their backyard. It made him nervous, scared that she would see him, but she never did. Then he would think to himself, Of course I can wait here for three years, for my Tania. She was waiting for him, it seemed.

She looked exhausted, and helpless. He wanted desperately to hold her again and stroke her fine hair, tell her all would be well soon. It was a deep gnawing at his insides. He was supposed to protect her, make her feel safe, keep her happy. It was his duty to make her smile, and love her, and show her that marrying him was not a mistake. Several times he had stood up when he saw her exit the house. Every time he'd caught sight of his changed body and sat heavily back down again.

But his parents were there, now, in his house. His mother looked terribly small, holding a shawl around her shoulders, with his father's arm wrapped around her waist. Every time Wikus caught a glimpse of them inside the house, his parents were glued to each other. It made Tania look utterly alone.

* * *

XVI. _(day three; night)  
_It only took minutes to make his way to Tania from Ms. Volschenk's house. He was perhaps less cautious than he should have been, moving around so quickly, passing under lamps when crossing the street. Nobody saw him, though, or if they did then they chucked it up to a trick of their eyes or lacked the motivation to call the police. Robots blinked red, yellow and green for the few vehicles that traversed the roads this late.

He crept up the front lawn on shaking limbs. He was back home, finally! Only a door separated him from his beautiful Tania; soon, so very soon, he would see his angel once again, and life would begin to settle again. With her at his side, he could wait for centuries for a cure, as long as she supported him, as he knew she would.

At his front door, his hand rose to turn the doorknob to step inside, and the kitchen light flicked on. It was then that he noticed that the outside light above the door was beaming down on him as well; he was plainly visible for anyone to see. Cursing, he moved around to the back. Christ, he was an idiot.

Crouching behind the patio deck, which was directly outside the kitchen, he saw Tania for the first time in a week. He smiled wider than he ever had before and leaned his forehead against the edge of the deck. He was home, with his baby again. Tilting his head to the side to see her again, he watched her submerge two glasses in water in the sink, and then wipe her hands on the hand towel that hung on the oven door.

Why was she up so late? The digital clock on the microwave read past two in the morning. Why wasn't Tania sleeping, dreaming?

Fundiswa Mhlanga stepped into the room and stood beside the table, his hand resting on one of the chairs. Wikus' smile faltered. The main, glass door was open, with just the screen separating them.

"Tania, I am sorry," said Fundiswa in a quiet voice. Tania's back was to him, her hands holding her weight against the counter. She stared out the window above the sink and remained silent. "Nobody is talking except about the lies that MNU is spreading."

"It wasn't septicaemia," she said firmly.

"I know it wasn't. I was there when he was sprayed. I think that had something to do with it, Tania, I am positive of it. He was sick after that."

"Yes," she said quietly. Standing up straight, she traced patterns on the countertop with her finger. "He would never have sex with the aliens, I know that now. He would never betray me like that." She turned around and stared sadly at Fundiswa. "I just don't want to betray him either."

"You won't. You're doing the right thing. We are doing the right thing here, even if we might get caught."

Wikus turned his gaze down to the thin, yellowing grass, trying his hardest not to think. A night breeze played in the air but it did nothing to make him feel at peace. Tania would not do this to him, to their marriage. She loved him; he knew she did. The still-sane half of his brain vouched for her; he was simply misreading the context of their conversation. However, that did not change the fact that his wife and friend seemed to have a connection now that they certainly did not have before Wikus had gotten sick.

"You are good with computers," Tania said.

"Yes."

A long, wretched minute of silence where they stared into each other's eyes and seemed to communicate something to each other. The first flames of jealousy were forged in Wikus' stomach. Speaking through gazes had been a task he thought only he could accomplish with Tania.

They hugged for longer than Wikus thought was necessary, and then Fundiswa walked home.

Wikus asked himself if this was the right moment to make his presence known. Putting Fundiswa's appearance out of his mind, he yearned to be close to his wife now. But he found himself paralyzed, unable to stand up and close the small distance between them. She held her head in her hands, rubbing her forehead, and tears flowed silently down her cheeks. She sobbed once into the back of one hand before she stood up tall, took a deep breath, and exited the kitchen, closing the light as she left.

Left in the dark, Wikus rested his head against the deck once more and sighed heavily to himself. He couldn't go inside, not like this. Not as a monster. His head was throbbing and the two points of discomfort on his forehead were disrupting his thoughts.

He crawled to the shed, following the extension cord that wound its way across the backyard and disappeared through the door. He crawled so as not to be seen, and also because he doubted his legs would support him anymore. He needed to pass out and sleep for three years.

The shed was a good size, and while a lock hung from the door, it was never actually closed. There was nothing of value to steal from inside, anyway, though at the moment it looked like the perfect place to settle for the night. He wondered briefly if he would open the door to find some lost soul also camping out in his shed. But alas, when he pulled it open, no living creature stared back at him…only pieces of art projects layered with abandonment.

It was his work place, where he made his arts and crafts for Tania, or just for fun. It looked the exact same it had the night before he'd begun the evictions. The cat food cans hanging in his poncho pocket shifted together as he moved about. After a moment's contemplation he pulled out his collected belongings and set the cans and CD on the worktable, and threw the ripped pillow on the ground. He used his poncho, some construction paper and newspaper, and the torn pillow as his bed. Curled up in his shed, his wife in their bedroom, Wikus slept and did not dream.

* * *

XVII. _(day four)  
_When he awoke the next morning, his bladder was fighting for room beneath his stomach, which, in a hostile manner, was trying to eat the rest of his insides for nutrients. Unfortunately he had no food on him anymore, as he had devoured the cat food on site of finding them. He made the decision to quit the habit immediately, as it was disgusting (except to eat) and he was unable to possess any more (unless he stole it from his own house). Several minutes later he revised his decision; from now on he would eat one can a day only. He would not have any today, since he had had five the day before and those should count for one day (he didn't think he could last five). He would find some more when it was dark again.

He had a disastrous headache. It disabled him from moving about too quickly, and even from standing. When he attempted to sit up, the blood rush to his head was powerful enough to blind him and knock him sideways. Breathing heavily and clutching his imploding skull, Wikus curled into the fetal position and prayed it to stop soon.

It was an odd sensation, feeling the blood flow to his antennae stubs. He was too scared to reach up and feel them, though, to see how long they had grown overnight. He chuckled at that; he could brave living with the alien limbs and torso, but not the head. That would involve his skull transforming…his face…his brain… He was terrified; his heart raced just at the thought of it. Moreover, the end of the transformation was approaching, which meant all that was left was his head and neck. The rest of his body was at least eighty percent finished, save for his lower abdomen and pelvic region.

He stayed in the shed throughout the day. The heat was brutal; the sun's rays sizzled on the roof and radiated through the cracks and open window (there was no glass; it was simply a square hole cut in the wall). Dehydration, thirst, and hunger all battled against him. His body was losing the fight, and without the means of attaining any necessities to fix it, he lay in the shadowed corner of the shed on his bed.

Closing his eyes, he found a rhythmic lullaby in the throbs of blood travelling to his skull, preparing for the transformation.

He passed out for the rest of the day.

* * *

XVIII. _(day four)  
_Had Wikus been awake, he would have seen Mrs. Smit leave his house in the morning, leaving Tania alone again. His day would have become infinitely worse upon Piet Smit's arrival in the late afternoon, as he may have possibly blown his cover and attempted to attack the man. Maybe bite his head off, or at least his ears. Instead he remained unconscious, and was oblivious to the resulting intense argument between father and daughter. Wikus awoke to a car door slamming loudly, the echoes travelling through the relatively quiet neighbourhood, and listened to a car driving away. He assumed it was Tania's mother.

He lay on his back for several minutes, revelling in the dream he had had. Tania had been there with him, beside him, accepting of his situation. She still loved him. Closing his eyes, Wikus felt hope and relief settle around him, blanketing his torn up body. The shirt-poncho was stained with blood where the exoskeleton had pierced through his skin. He was a mess, but she still loved him.

The backdoor slid open and Wikus scrambled to his knees, but was abruptly blinded by dark, flashing spots as blood pounded in his head. Grasping the windowsill for support, he blinked rapidly, and when the wave disappeared he stared out the window. She was standing on the patio, her arms wrapped loosely around her midsection, holding onto her elbows. Her face was marred with a frown and she was worriedly chewing her bottom lip, but she was still hopelessly beautiful. He narrowed his eyes. He hoped she wasn't losing weight; her shoulders were looking bonier. Her hair was lanky as well, as though it had not been washed in several days.

"Tania, baby," he whispered. Saying her name brought a level of calm over his muddled mind. He needed to see her, she was so close—

Her gaze swept over the backyard, over the shed, and he ducked hastily out of sight. Sitting against the wall, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes to fight the dizziness and the headache, Wikus sighed heavily. If he could not let her see him now, then there was no chance he could approach her and ask her to look past his alien body. He would have to wait, again.

The top of his forehead now sported four pressure points. Raising a hesitant hand, he probed the spots with a finger. His two long, flanking antennae were approximately a quarter of the way grown, but he was unable to move them and the antennae themselves procured no sensations at the touch; they were nerveless, or perhaps not yet wired to his brain. The two smaller antennae between the longer ones had not made an appearance yet, though judging by the discomfort, they would arrive soon enough.

Lifting the poncho, he observed the severe depletion of his abdomen; just another day, it seemed, and the transformation would be complete. He was waiting for his pelvis to change as well, though that seemed to be taking a while. He looked hideously mismatched, being alien legs and upper body but human in between. He lowered the poncho again to hide it.

In the corner of the shed there was a pack of white glue. He considered eating it, or perhaps sniffing it to quell the horrible aching in his stomach. His hunger did not help his headaches. In the end he was too lazy to try it.

In just a few hours, his hunger pains began to subside. He stopped thinking about steak, hamburgers, salads, fruits, tomatoes, chips, and Gunter's fast-food restaurant. The hunger was replaced by a terrible emptiness instead, as though the exoskeleton was encompassing nothing at all, and he was simply an empty tube. Even his thirst disappeared. At first he had thought it was because he was so dehydrated and starved, but when his insides began to ache and burn he understood that he was completing the transformation internally now. It was horribly uncomfortable as parts of him moved around to accommodate his shrinking abdomen. Since his entire body, including his organs, had been changing throughout the days, it was not a major alteration in their chemical structure per se, more just placement. He lay on his back and gripped the torn pillow, unfortunately abusing it even further in the process when he pulled at it in fear.

It was a relatively quick process, luckily, though it felt much longer. In the following hours, as the sun dipped out of sight and the crickets came to life, his hips and pelvis transformed. His abdomen ached terribly for quite a while, something he could not understand at first, until he realized that his reproductive system was altering itself. When the pain settled and there were no more human characteristics below his shoulders, he turned onto his side, crawled into a ball and mourned for Tania.

She settled down at the patio table, the beige umbrella protecting her from the sun. Wikus watched her silently as she read a novel. She had brought a notebook outside with her as well, and every couple of minutes she would jot down some lines. He wondered what she was writing. She was not a writer, though she had tried her hand at poetry several times over the years. Wikus had always encouraged her to work at it because her poems were beautiful, but she had felt she did not have it in her to be a poet, or an author; she was simply someone who appreciated the art of literature and the authors who designed it.

The outside light was on, bright enough to illuminate the pages of her book. He wished she would sleep, though. Her face was drawn and her skin pale; he wanted her to look after herself, to remain healthy. He felt relieved when she finally went back inside, and shut off all the lights, presumably to go to bed.

His jaw began to ache. When he swept his tongue through his mouth, his remaining teeth (all, except the molars) wiggled about. He closed his eyes and wondered how he would possibly pull out the teeth when his claws were so large and clumsy. The problem solved itself minutes later, when his jaw began to reform, causing his teeth to loosen enough so he could remove them with his tongue. He was terrified, with a handful of teeth in his fist. His head was transforming. It would all be over soon, but not before his face was gone, his skull was gone, and his brain was different. He would have tendrils coming out of the middle of his face where his nose used to be. He would breathe through gills on his neck and pick up sound through his antennae and the fine hairs on the back of his head and neck. He would no longer be human.

When the pain hit, and he felt his cheekbones change and his jaw lengthened and became more angular, and he felt his nose and ear cartilage liquefy and turn into something else, he stopped breathing. It was happening too fast. It shouldn't have been happening at all, this was full blown, cold insanity. His hands gripped his head, his face, and he tried to shout out for help, or just to yell to release his anger and fear and pain, but his voice was no longer working. One hand clutched his throat, which was also transforming. Holes formed on either side of his throat – slits for gills – and blood poured through his fingers, coating the poncho, his arm, and the floor. He was dying.

Air was no longer entering or exiting his body. He clawed at the gills, clawed at his nose, which was now nothing more than a bump on his face – no more nostrils; flattened, a gradually sloping hill in a valley. How did one breathe through the sides of the neck? He did not know, and he screamed soundlessly and thrashed around and fell backwards. His fight did not last long – his skull was incredibly thin, in the process of transferring into necessary tissues and chemicals, and so the small impact with the ground instantly knocked him unconscious.

He awoke relatively soon afterward to a new body and mind. His antennae padded the ground beside his head, and unnecessarily transferred the message to his brain that he was lying on flat wooden panels that were missing their bark. The in depth knowledge of something as mundane as plywood, the flash that lit up his retinas while he continued to view the outside world in front of him, was a shock, and enthralling.

"Whoa," he meant to say, but it did not happen. With an absence of the lips and cheek muscles required to form English words, and his altered voice box, all that came out of Wikus' mouth was a crackling vibration of sound. At least he still had a tongue, albeit it was wider, larger and pointier. He let it explore his mouth – his teeth were circular and had pointy edges, like molars. There were no teeth at the front of his mouth; the tendrils nearest to his mouth, which were clawed, would serve as biting incisors. In place of human incisors he now had flat, rounded, beak-like bones at the front of his upper and lower jaw. He knew that since the clawed tendrils acted as initial biting and tearing mechanisms, the flat bones were mainly used with the tongue to sound out words.

He gave it a try. His human voice, midway between deep and soft, was now non-existent in terms of making human sounds. Instead, his clicks, whirls, growls, and other such alien noises were simply at a slightly higher octave than a 'low' alien voice (such as Christopher's), but much deeper than that of a child (such as Oliver's). The subtle differences in alien voices made it difficult to distinguish between them; they also had to rely on familiarity and speech patterns.

While Wikus did not make actual words with his new vocal cords and mouth, he did make some interesting sounds. He had to admit that it was entertaining. He explored his new ability to click, which was not a sound made by his tongue and the roof of his mouth, as he had expected, but instead by a mechanism in his throat. Perhaps he should have listened to the lessons preached by the MNU scientists ("How and What to Look for in a Prawn" Thursday March 3, 2001 at precisely 1:00 PM, second floor auditorium), or read the textbooks (_The Complete Physical Dynamic Equilibrium: the Chemistry of the Prawn_ by Arthur Dawkins, Ph.D., or _Meaty Mysteries: the Alien Insects_ by Jacques Lefevre, primary school teacher). Instead he had amused himself by drawing doodles; half the time he had never even made it to the lectures, being sidetracked on the way. He knew the basics of the alien anatomy, but he had never had to inspect the finer workings of one. All the more fun now, really.

He sat up, still moving his tongue and throat around to make noise. Because he was no longer encased in skin, fine hairs, about an inch long each, did the feeling for him. The muscle tissue in between the exoskeleton plating acted as skin, with nerves, but very little of it was visible; therefore, the little hairs came in handy. As he'd been transforming, before the hairs had made an appearance, he had been worried by the lack of sensation he felt; all that the plating could tell him was whether a surface was hard or soft. Now, though, it almost felt as though he had more nerves than he had had as a human – the hairs were incredibly sensitive, and like the antennae, communicated vast amounts of information in just a millisecond without overwhelming him.

His hands came up to investigate above his shoulders. It was odd, having such a thick neck, and gills. He realized that he had been breathing the entire time he was awake, without even thinking about it. He supposed his new alien brain would have figured it out quickly, in order for him not to asphyxiate.

He crossed his eyes to try to get a view of the feelers on his face. They curled about with only the slightest provocation from his mind; at first, when he wanted them to move, he thought quite hard on it and they went flying in every direction, some even sticking straight out for a moment. The sharp movements scared the Hell out of him and he learned to keep his thoughts quiet, lest the tentacles take over his face.

Still slightly sad and uncomfortable about losing what had made him a man (and of service to Tania), Wikus kept his mind distracted as he cut up his pants, making them into modified Prawn shorts.

Voila. He was a Prawn.

The thought was quickly losing its appeal. While it was fun to have a new body that was not bleeding, and shifting, and changing, it also meant that he was no longer human. He stilled his movements and stared out the window, at his and Tania's dark, quiet house. How was it possible to be so close to her, but separated by an infinite distance?

_You're not a Prawn_, he reminded himself, as he began looking at himself differently. At least before, there had been a semblance of humanity; now, there was none. Nothing to remind himself that he was still Wikus van der Merwe.

Except for Tania. Breathing in deeply, he convinced himself that that was enough.

* * *

_Many thanks to Quinn, Nina Modaffari, ObscureWriter, and Kyuubigod for reviewing. Your kind and encouraging words are very appreciated! Feel free to leave your comments, my fellow readers! :) Thanks for reading!_

_Sincerely,  
__LBS_


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